


Not if but when (Hold your breath)

by DarkShadeless



Series: Empty Spaces [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game), Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Deception, Double Life, Gen, Hiding in Plain Sight, Sith Culture, Sith shadow society, as is canon, did you really think they were all dead, for Revenge of the Sith, from a certain point of view, grey Sith, the end of the jedi order, think again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-07 04:18:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18612988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkShadeless/pseuds/DarkShadeless
Summary: That has always been the question, Dex supposes: Not if but when.Turns out he has a say in the matter, though.Aka: In which Dexter Jettster saves the day, or at least some of it. No one will ever know.





	Not if but when (Hold your breath)

**Author's Note:**

> Set in the same universe as Empty Spaces. Can be read as a stand-alone, I guess?
> 
> I /think/ I caught all typoes and such but I have to get up in five hours and I'm done x_X will look over it again tomorrow.  
> EDIT: Hah. Not bad for sleep-deprivation. If I missed anything I sure can't find it so there's that. Have fun!

 

 

Dexter Jettster has led a colourful life. More than colourful enough, maybe. It’s a small wonder he made it to what passes for retirement for the likes of him. _Retirement… hah._

He’s happy where he is, in his diner, serving the best damned burgers anyone has ever eaten and gossiping his days away. Or he _would be_ if he hadn’t apparently been caught by one of the oldest curses in existence.

‘ _May you live in interesting times.’_

The realisation starts to creep up on him when Qui-Gon’s brat turns up alone for lunch, braid missing and shadows under his eyes. By the time Obi-Wan hands him a dart and asks if he has ever seen anything like it, Dexter carries around a weight on his chest as if he’s been holding his breath for years and change.

“Cloners, huh? Are they friends?”

Dex chuckles, unable to help himself. “Depends.” That boy.

“Depends?” The young Jedi returns his grin, “Depends on what?”

That’s when he sees her, when he’s leaning forward, about to give Kenobi a good ribbing. The moment stretches and slowly his friends smile falters. “Dex?”

“On how good your manners are. How thick your pocketbook is.” It comes out far too serious, too on the nose without humor for a buffer. The galaxy is a harsh place. Dexter has enough experience with its underbelly to have lost all illusions about that long ago. Mostly it doesn’t get to him.

But there she is. Just as tattered as when he last saw her, a shoo-in for ‘riffraff’ and wearing it without an ounce of shame. How long since they last met? Years. Has it been a decade yet?

Her hair is starting to turn grey at the temples. He’s pretty sure it hadn’t been, then.

“I see. Dex, are you alright?”

Dexter pinches himself where the Jedi can’t see. The pain does some to jolt him back to the present. “What? Oh, sure. Sorry Obi-Wan, I’ve got my head in the clouds today.”

“No worries, it’s all good.” Kenobi hesitates but in the end duty wins out. “I can’t thank you enough but I have to check this out.”

“Rain-check on the food, huh? I should be offended.” The inside joke falls flat, carried by nothing but Dexter’s force of will.

It still makes a small smile return to his bearded friend’s face. “I’ll treat you next time?”

“I’m the cook!”

Obi-Wan ducks his faux-offended shove and dances out of reach, eyes twinkling with mirth. “Then I’m sure the food will be excellent!” He almost runs over the woman loitering between their booth and the entrance but catches himself at the last moment. Dexter watches him turn up his charm, met with her answering grin and has to look away.

She always was pretty, in a rakish sort of way. Knew just how to use it, too.

The door has barely closed behind the Jedi when she slides into the seat across from him. The diner is a riot of noise, with their booth an oasis of quiet. The unease Dex has been trying to ignore for so long it has become a part of his life digs its claws into his heart. “Tam.”

“Dexter.”

“It’s been a long time.”

“It has.” She’s mustering him with those warm eyes one can mistake for light brown if they don’t know better.

Dex works his jaw and brushes a finger over the jammer under the table. It comes online with a low hum, cloaking their booth with one of the most valuable currencies on Coruscant: privacy. “What can your uncle do for you?”

“He can give me some advice.” It’s not like Tam to be this serious. She’s always been a child of laughter, since he first held her when she still fit into two of his cupped hands. But that was a long time ago. “Something is coming.”

“I know.” There’s no denying it anymore. There never was any denying it, not even for someone with as little talent as him. “The Dark Side is growing stronger.”

“It is. We've passed the apex.” Even in her disguise, that is built so closely to her true self as all of their best masks are, sitting in his sunny diner Tam looks too much like what she really is. Her paleness makes her eyes stand out more, blazing faintly with inner light. She wraps her arms around herself and hunches her shoulders.

Despite that show of vulnerability Dex could never mistake her for anything but a predator. “There has been… talk. Among the named ones.”

_Stars and void._

Never has Dexter wished more to live in a different century altogether. “Has anything been decided?”

“Not yet.” _But it has been said._ Somehow hearing that makes it real. It settles into Dex’ gut like a ton of bricks. “If the time has really come then we have an _obligation_.”

That is true enough. Promises have been made, oaths taken. Dexter can’t help but swallow. Tentatively, he argues, “Niece. Tam- My lady Sin. Do you really want to go to war with the Jedi?”

 _Again_ , hangs in the air unspoken. They don’t have to discuss how that turned out the last time. Every child of their family knows those stories.

“They have grown complacent. When if not now? We are _warriors_ , uncle! And we’ve been hiding for over a thousand years. It’s disgraceful.”

It takes him longer than it should have, confronted with the very real possibility of having to snuff out the bright light of the young man he just sent on his way, someone he calls a friend, to realize that that entire train of thought does not sound much like his bubbly niece at all.

Dexter leans back heavily, crosses both sets of his arms and squints at her. “Are you playing devil’s advocate with me?”

Tam grimaces. “Korta’s been a pain in the ass and he’s not exactly _wrong_ , y’know? No one else is telling him to stuff it.” His little hatchling (and she always will be) slumps onto the table sullenly. “Sho is on the fence and the elders are keeping their traps shut. Why meeeee?”

Some of the weight on Dexter’s shoulders lifts. “That’s what you get for taking that trial, I told you it was going to be nothing but trouble.”

“Oh, shut _up_.” Smiling gently, Dex pats her on the unruly mop she calls hair. Tam endures it with a grumble and a sigh. “We can’t hide forever.”

 _We could_. Especially here, in the diner he has made his home, the impulse to say those traitorous words is strong but Dexter knows them to be a lie. Tam is right. They _are_ warriors. One day they will reclaim their place in the galaxy and they won’t have to live in fear of discovery anymore, making concession after concession just to keep what they’ve managed to salvage over the years. He, too, feels that urge like a torch setting fire to his very spirit. He can only imagine how much worse it is for those responsible for their family’s wellbeing, who feel the weight of duty that much more keenly.

And yet… ever since Obi-Wan returned without Qui-Gon, ever since Naboo all those years ago, “Tam. I know it isn’t my place but I… I have a bad feeling about this.”

That’s what it boils down to. Dexter feels silly saying it aloud. Though he has the Force there are those in their line that have more of it, so much more. They should recognize the signs if they were valid, shouldn’t they?

His niece takes his declaration in with an unhappy twist of her lips. “You too? I guess I’ll dig my heels in, then. Korta’s gonna kill me in my sleep.”

Dex has to blink a few times before that really sinks in. “Are you sure? This might be our chance.” One they have been waiting for for a _millennium_. Much as he doesn’t like what it might mean, they aren’t part of the Order of sitting on their ass and counting stars. An opportunity like this might not come around again anytime soon.

Across the booth, Tam squares her shoulders. “You’ve never led me wrong, uncle, and neither has my gut. What’s a girl have to do to get some Jawa juice around here, hm?”

 

* * *

 

Say what you will, her uncle is someone you can rely on and so are his instincts.

The Sith rise again, the Jedi Temple burns and they end up stealing what they can away from the advance of what is a part of their own Order, anything that isn’t nailed down or can be pried loose before the clones get to it.

Whomever is the current mastermind has not only cut a bloody swath through the Republic, unless Tam is missing her mark they have sacrificed their entire dummy faction as well. An impressive scheme, in some ways, in others…

Even if she believed someone like that would suffer a power to live that they can’t control, Tam’Sin thinks to herself as she bundles away another soot covered, wide-eyed child into the crawlspace of her ship, this isn’t a victory her people could survive.

On their worst days, in the darkest periods of their history, their honor was all they had. Time and again they chose it, no matter the consequences. It is their birth right and their burden, the core of an identity they have been forced to chip away at, no matter how it hurt them.

Never that far. Never that much. There are lines you cannot cross without losing all you are.

In the cargo hold Garen Muln is doing his level best to hack his lungs out and still trying to thank her. Poor idiot has no idea he jumped from the pan straight into the fire and that is a damned good thing. Tam has the feeling her family’s collective paranoia is going to start paying off in short order like it hasn’t since the last Purge.

“Seriously,” He dissolves into another coughing fit. Goodness, that can’t be healthy. She should probably find the last of that bacta spray… “I can’t- You don’t even know- Just-“

He trails off, a hunted, lost look on his face and she averts her eyes. “It’s fine. Quid pro quo and all that. Pretty sure I owed some Jedi a favour or two. Don’t die all over my cargo, yeah?”

Some focus returns to him but the brittleness of a man that has watched everything he ever loved burn before his eyes doesn’t fade. And how could it? If he lived a thousand years it would wash out but never fade. If he taught his story to the children of his children’s children from the great beyond, his pain would resonate in them so deeply it would carry on into the future. She knows. She was raised on pride and ruin. Her greatest treasures are shards of the past gifted to her by ghosts more haunted than a living being can ever be.

“I’m pretty sure owing Master Tahl a drink doesn’t equal risking your life. She always said you were a good friend.”

 _Tahl._ Tam squeezes her eyes shut and swallows feelings she has no time for and no desire to identify. _Yeah, she’d be real grateful._

“Don't mention it. Where to?”

There’s an awkward silence.

The Republic has fallen. Jedi have been named an enemy of state. They have nowhere to go and nowhere to turn to, without their benefactors becoming as much of a target as they are.

Irony is a bitch.

Tam’Sin has successfully avoided examining whether her pity outshines her more petty feelings on the matter. Her sympathy is definitely in short supply. Mostly.

She grew up on the Tales of the Brother War, on what their chroniclers saved from the First Purge and from the Second and the Third and all that came between. Her nana sang her to sleep with the lullabies of the lost and the damned, of heroes scraping together the courage to face impossible odds to buy their brethren the time to escape, to _run._ For all they are warriors when a battle is lost and the Light comes for you as cold as the open space and with just as much mercy, there is nothing else you can do. There are fights you can’t win, only survive.

They will learn that now, these soft remands of the champions of radiance that once hounded them.

“Look.” At the end of the day? Tam is not a hero. She’s one of the last unbroken remnants of an Empire and she’s responsible for more than just herself.

Even if she were a hero, she wouldn’t be Muln’s. His Order has made their bed and they will have to lie in it, even if it turns into a coffin. As they say, what goes around comes around. “Are you gonna want to fight… that? Whoever did that?”

 _The Sith_. **_Us_**. _The guys you worked over almost enough to kill us off but not quite? You should have. Stars know I wouldn’t show you any mercy if that was me with my finger on the trigger. I know damned well I can’t afford it. I know what you are **like**._

Look what has come home to roost. Not even all of it, Tam’s people are still sitting on their own tickets for a pound of flesh, they just haven’t forgotten themselves enough to torch nurseries to get at it. They might not be the only ones out there, waiting their turn. ~~  
~~

Muln hesitates but she can see it in his eyes, beyond the pieces of who he was before his world ended. The fire hasn’t gone out of this one yet. She can respect him for it but it means they’re not on the same side here, not that they ever were.

“Because I’ll tell you what, no place you fight ‘em out of is gonna be safe. Do you want the kids to live?”

Dismay chases his determination. “I…” He’s a knight, through and through. She can already tell which decision he _wants_ to make, even if he won’t allow it. Not without a spot of help.

Never let it be said that Sith fight fair.

Tam sits down on a cargo container and crosses her arms. “Well?”

“Of course I want them to be safe. The entire galaxy isn’t safe!”

She pulls a face, conceding the point, at least somewhat. “They’ll be better off hiding.”

It’s not even a lie. If anyone has experience with this kind of prosecution it’s one of her own. The only people who have more claim to it are centuries dead but their stories and lessons have lived on. Tam’s first instinct in a fight is to go for a blaster. Her shielding is so pristine she feels like a mostly headblind person to Jedi Masters sweeping her up in Force-amplified hugs. That’s not conjecture either, Tahl had actually done that once or twice. If she ever suspected anything she never said.

Tam carefully packs the memories of her gentle presence away. So close yet so far. What would she have thought if she had known the truth?

Then as now, Tam had had to keep her priorities straight. Not always easy.

Muln’s face is a riot of emotion, chief among them helplessness. Slowly Tam allows her shoulders to sink. “Okay. I might be able to swing something.” Hope blooms under her concession, fragile and beautiful. Are all Jedi this naïve? “ _But!_ But.”

He waits with baited breath as she chews on her lip, hiding unease over her deception within hesitance to say what must be said. Secrets within secrets. The best lies are the truth. “If you’re ever gonna go out and face space-magicians with creepy mind powers you _can’t know_. I mean, they could- They could crack you. Couldn’t they?”

Garen swallows heavily. It does nothing to quell the rasp in his voice. “Yes. They could.”

Tam falls quiet, lets him come to his own conclusions. Her work is done.

 

_He does leave them with her, ignorant of what kind of deal he is making. She promises him they will be as safe as she can make them._

_And they will be. They won’t be Jedi, at the end of the day, but they will be safe._

_Maybe, Tam musses as she comforts her little passengers in the wake of the knight’s departure, her people are getting some of their own back after all. The Force works in mysterious ways._

 

 


End file.
